Really? 20 Years Of Preparation?
October 23, 2022: 1,384 Days Remaining. (Travis)
Yes, twenty years of preparation. I know this seems ridiculous and that’s because it is. Many homesteaders jump into the fray with only chicken and raised bed experience and many homesteaders fail to find a reasonable amount of self reliance in the early days of their new lives. Take my family for example. My Great Grand Uncle Jack stepped off a train in the middle of the deep woods of Michigan sometime in the 1920s with nothing but a few bags of tools, food, and man made materials. He spent years hewing railroad ties out of local timber and selling it to the train as it passed by. In those days if you stacked a pile of railroad ties by the track they would stop and buy them off you solving both party’s transportation problems. Uncle Jack made a log cabin a few miles North of a logging town named Wilwin. Wilwin has since been abandoned and sold as personal property but that is a story for another post. Now the town of Trout Lake Michigan has replaced Wilwin as the go-to community for supplies and socialization. Though, there’s still only about 350 residents. Eventually Uncle Jack couldn’t keep up with hewing enough logs in order to justify living next to the train tracks so he moved away to find better employment. He had existed there just long enough to give my Grandpa Frank (his nephew) a passion for the area. Grandpa Frank fell in love with the deep woods surrounding the old town of Wilwin and was able to secure 160 acres of land on an old dirt road just two miles from Uncle Jacks now abandoned cabin.
This is where the trend starts to develop of my family having a passion for this little tract of land and yet not having the capability to live there full time. In some ways it’s considered a family curse! Grandpa had a little cabin on the land but with seven children in the house he couldn’t justify living there full time and was forced to move “down state” to the lower peninsula of Michigan where there was consistent work in order to support the family. It would be decades before he could retire and move back to Trout Lake permanently. He lived on that little dirt road until he was 94 and passed away shortly after splitting his own firewood. In my opinion he succeeded where all other generations of my family have failed. If you live well into your 90’s and are still splitting firewood (albeit with a log splitter not a maul) until your last day: then you’ve won. The only thing I want to change about my life path is that I want to move up there when my kids are still young enough to enjoy the woods. While he moved up there in his 60s I want to move up there in my 30s.
Yes, I know, I’ve seemed to skip a generation. The generation of my parents Jeffery and Denise. They too had a passion for the area and built the “Nook of the North” a little log cabin just 400 yards from Grandpa’s Lodge. They built it on the weekends, holidays, and summer months while going to school at LSSU in Sault St Marie. They had to buy concrete for the foundation, nails, and roofing but they made the rest from the land around them. I have a wonderful little picture of my mother sitting astride a great big log peeling it with a sharpened leaf spring she had removed from a wrecked Jeep they found in the woods. The windows were picked out of the garbage from another local house that was upgrading to better models and the family used an outhouse instead of indoor plumbing. When my Dad was out putting the roof on the completed cabin a business man on vacation up north pulled into the driveway and asked what such a beautiful log cabin cost. To which my Dad said “Oh, I have about $600 invested so far.” My Dad still laughs about the shocked look he received in response. Ok, I seem to be getting sidetracked. The cabin may be a discussion for another time. The point is that my parents had it right trying to build there so early in their lives and my Grandpa had it right living there till the end but in both cases the family had to move away for work because no matter how “self sufficient” you think you are… you still need salt or medicine or fuel or electricity or clothing. You’ll never be able to make EVERYTHING so money (or community) is needed to fill the gaps in your wants/needs.
When Tealah and I started our journey all we wanted was to exist together. Location, means, money, and everything else meant very little to us. We knew we wanted a quiet farm or homestead someday and we knew that we wanted to not have the need to work for someone else. However, at 18 we didn’t know how to get there so as I mentioned in the last post I joined the Military. We started the 20 year countdown to self sufficiency. The goal became to build our capabilities and resources so that we could lower our cost of living to meet the amount of income my military retirement would generate (50% base pay). For most people in the US it wouldn’t be a livable amount BUT if we grew our own food, hunted, gathered, and had all the tools necessary to repair and build our cost of living would be greatly reduced.
So here’s the breakdown of how to make it happen.
1) Zero Debt: Yes, we’ve taken on debts in the form of cars, credit card, and mortgages over the years but we’ve already paid off all our vehicles, crushed the mortgage we took on to buy Grandpa Frank’s place after he died, and are very very close to paying off our last two credit cards. It took a lot of sacrifice but we were debt free at 33 years old while also owning our forever home (Grandpa Franks).
2) Secure Housing: As I mentioned we have Grandpa’s Lodge paid off and now all we have to do is to keep up on taxes each year. We also had the “Nook of the North” signed over to us when my Mother passed away and my Dad decided to live down in Florida instead of moving back up north. This gives us two houses (both need work but are solid) to work with.
3) Secure transportation: We always buy cheap cars. Our rule of thumb is that for ever $1,000 we spend on a car it has to last one year so if we buy a $1,500 beater car and it lasts two years it’s a WIN! Currently there are six cars in our name and only one of them is a project car. The other five are either road worthy or a few hours of effort from being road worthy. They are not new cars, but with six options something will work when we need it to. They are: 1957 Spitfire (project), 1968 VW Dune Buggy, 1995 Suburban, 2002 Mini Cooper, 2004 Excursion, and our more modern 2012 Mini Van. We can fix all of them when they break so we should be set of vehicles for the next 15-20 years.
4) Grow capability: This is a big one and I won’t be able to fully encapsulate it here but here’s an example: We eat meat-Venison is the cheapest meat since you just need a hunting license and a bullet (no feed, no housing)-we bought two very nice hunting rifles-we also practice with those rifles-we practice skinning/processing deer-we bought a meat grinder-we bough a meat slicer-we bought a sausage press-we stocked up on ammo-and we have a deep freezer. Now of course we’re going to raise chickens and pigs but now we will not need additional money to process or procure our meat while living on the homestead. We’ve done this with hundreds of different categories from apple crushing to milling our own lumber. From planting trees up north to building a sawmill it’s all preparation. You can very quickly see where 20 years of decent income and practice can quickly be used up in the building of skills and capability.
5) Build alternate sources of income: Eventually, my sawmill will break or the apple trees will die and we’ll need money. That’s a homesteading fact. You’ll need money (or community) eventually. Right now our main effort is building this community through YouTube and this website. In order to keep a running tally of our YouTube Community growth I’ll put in a few reminders in these posts so we have something personal to look back on. Today we have 304,183 subscribers, multiple brand deals, and have seen between $700 and $3,500 a month increase in income. However, it’s very inconsistent and not enough to quit my job and jump into the homestead three and a half years early. The growth has been incredible this year going from 1,200 subscribers to over 300 thousand in only nine months. I expect it to tapper off from here for awhile and the new goal (since we were not expecting even 100k until 2028) is 1 Million subscribers by 2027. This will give us four months after we arrive in Michigan to start our main adventure. All of this is quite unexpected to be honest and if we DO end up with 1 million subs our homesteading adventure will be quite easy as it’s designed to survive at $3,000 a month income from military retirement. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to see double or triple that goal if we’re selling shirts, have a patreon, and are putting out consistent videos on how we are making things work on the homestead.
Closure: For the first time in 16.5 years it’s becoming a reality in my head instead of a fantasy. Our aspiration (something to work towards but may not achieve) has transitioned into a goal (something that is defined by its completion). Now it’s time for us to buckle down and round out our capabilities so that we can have a smooth transition from what is to what will be. Stick around for the journey and get ready for some hard work come August 2026!
